| Sponsoring A Child For Surgery |
Sponsoring a child for spine surgery only costs $6,000. This same surgery in the USA would cost over $100,000. All FOCOS surgeons donate their time and skills for free. Your entire donation would go to local hospital costs including hospital stay, xrays, MRIs, CT scans, and blood work. All spine implants are donated.
Sponsoring a child makes a wonderful holiday gift. It notes that the donor is compassionate and will help those patients in need. Your gift changes our patients’ lives. They become more confident to meet life head on. Each recipient will write to you a thank you note. Each patient will know of your individual kindness.
May God Bless you for your benevolence. |
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| Yeabu Bangura |
Yeabu Bangura was abandoned by her birth-parents after her spine had become seriously
deformed because of a tuberculosis infection. By the time the civil war in Sierra
Leone had ended, Yeabu was living with her grandfather in a government camp for
internally displaced persons outside of Sierra Leone’s capital city Freetown. Because
her spine was so grotesquely deformed, Yeabu was used as begging fodder by some
of the desperately poor women of the camp. Every Friday they would go to the large
Mosque in Freetown to take advantage of the crowd gathered there for the Muslim
prayer day as they used Yeabu to beg for change.
We sent Yeabu to Ghana in May 2005,
where she had a very successful surgery by a team from FOCOS . Yeabu is now fully
recovered and is back in Sierra Leone. She smiles a lot now that her pain has been
relieved and because she has been given back the full use of her legs that had become
paralyzed.
We cannot be sure of Yeabu’s age. We can only guess that she is older
than her small and stunted frame suggest’s. With only$500 a year we could place
Yeabu with a family in Sierra Leone where, she would have brothers and sisters,
she would have enough to eat, and where she would attend school at a grade level
appropriate to her current ability. To help Yeabu, please make your tax deductible
check out to FOCOS Mark it “Sierra leone, Yeabu Bangura” in the memo section, and
mail to:
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Dauda Sesay |
Dauda Sesay is only seven or eight year old. But at times he seems like an old man, as he sits, quiet and hunched over, with his spine protruding outward from the middle of his back. Dauda’s young spine was weakened by a tuberculosis infection. It then fractured, and has been collapsing forward. Although his trunk is already severely shortened, Dauda can still be helped. Not only will his deterioration be checked, saving him from the likely-hood of paralysis, but he will become instantly a bit taller, if he can be treated by a surgical team from FOCOS.
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Hawa Morjeh |
Hawa Morjeh was six years old when her spine first fractured due to a tuberculosis infection. By the age of 21 she had left her parents' home in a poor section of Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, and went to live with an aunt in a village not too far off. But with little education and being unable to do any hard, physical work, she felt useless and became very depressed. Our case worker for the Freetown area became aware of Hawa's plight. He took her to a camp run for and by people disabled by polio. Hawa, now age 22, lives there among her new friends where she is being trained in tailoring. She is said to be much happier. But she still has trouble standing as she often needs to do with her tailoring. A surgery by FOCOS would arrest any further deterioration to her spine, would reliever her of pain, and would greatly improve her ability to work in her new found trade.
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Mabinti Sow |
Mabinti Sow’s spine started to deform when she was three years old . Now, at age six, Mabinti stands with her back arched and her chest thrown forward as she tries to maintain her balance and reduce her pain at the same time. She remains quiet and still, never laughing or smiling, all signs of chronic pain in a child her age. It is critical that Mabinti be taken from Sierra Leone to Accra, Ghana, where she can be further evaluated and surgically treated by a team from FOCOS before her condition deteriorates any further.
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Mohamed Mansaray |
Mohamed Mansaray lives with his family in a large town where his parents are market traders. Little Mohamed Jr. does a pretty good job of staying cheerful and getting around despite his spine being fractured in two places from tuberculosis infections. He has completed the eight months regime against the TB. But it is important that Mohamed now get surgery to stabilize his spine. The longer he waits, the greater the risk that his fractures will continue to deteriorate and will eventually leave him paralyzed or that he will succumb from compression of his chest cavity and lungs.
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Rugiatu Kamara |
Rugiatu Kamara is a very healthy 15-year-old girl, except that her spine has been curving with a scoliosis since the time she was two. She lives with her parents and her siblings in a neighborhood of a town near to the airport in Sierra Leone. Rugiatu attends school and helps with the household chores as best she can. There is a grave danger that Rugiatu’s spine, left unchecked, will continue to twist, leaving her more deformed and very possibly leading to an early death. The course of Rugiatu’s life will be redirected if she can get a surgery in time from FOCOS.
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Mohamed Lamine Koroma |
Nick named Balu, three-year-old Mohamed Lamine Koroma was in obvious pain when he was brought to us in January, 2007. He stood with difficulty, bending at the waste and holding his knees for support, looking like a little baseball umpire. Balu seems to have responded well to the anti tuberculosis medications he has completed. He is now a cheerful four-year-old who plays with his companions and even runs to greet a visitor with a camera from America. But he still is in trouble. His spine fractured by tuberculosis, affects his posture. It caused him to use a wall for support as he waited to be x-rayed in January, 2008. His father, who drives a taxi cab between the airport and the ferry in Sierra Leone, is hoping that his young son will be among those chosen to visit Ghana for surgery by FOCOS.
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Fatmata Kamara |
At age 14, Fatmata Kamara's legs have already lost their ability to support her. She was still walking last year when she was started on the free, anti-tuberculosis medication needed to fight the infection in her spine. But after only completing about three months of the eight month regime, Fatmata's parents were not able to continue supplying her with the medicines because money was demanded by the new nurse in charge of distribution in their part of Sierra Leone. Fatmata's mother was exhausted as she tried to cope with with Fatmata's needs as well as those of her infant set of twins and her other children. Fatmata's father could hardly afford to take time off from his efforts to feed his family by fishing and farming in order to help Fatmata with her basic needs such as mobility.
An organization which works in Sierra Leone has provided a wheelchair to Fatmata and a bicycle to a native volunteer. They have also provided funds to a nearby hospital to ensure that Fatmata receives the full medical treatment required. The volunteer is monitoring her treatment closely. If Fatmata is to have any hope of regaining the use of her legs, she will also need to be sent from Sierra Leone to Accra, Ghana, where she can be surgically treated by a team from the Foundation of Orthopedics and Complex Spine (FOCOS).
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Abdulai Bangura |
Abdulai Bangura, age 15, shed tears of shame and embarrassment when we first photographed him in Sierra Leone in December 2007. Abdulai lives with his family in an extremely poor community of fishermen resting between the large Freetown harbor and a steep incline. Abdulai's father goes out everyday in a small canoe to try and catch fish to keep his family alive.
We have started Abdulia on the eight month regime of medication needed to rid his body of tuberculosis pathogens. An older brother carried Abdulai up the incline and his mother carried him on her back into the center of Freetown where we had his spine X-rayed. We are hoping that medical treatment followed by a surgical intervention by the Foundation of Orthopedics and Complex Spine (FOCOS) might restore Abdulai's ability to walk. We will have to raise the funds needed to get Abdulai to and from Accra as well as to pay for his hospital bills in Ghana.
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